”When, alas, 2007/2008 produced a relatively cold and snowy winter, Kyoto shape shifters proclaimed more snow was a sign of global warming (now renamed ”climate change,” thus ignoring the fact the climate always changes) and that in any event, no one year could be used to prove or disprove man-made global warming.

Which is true, except why didn’t they say so the year before?”

”Alas, when it became apparent there hasn’t been any global warming since 1998 — even in the arbitrary way the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines it — Kyoto shape shifters argued one decade’s worth of data was insufficient to make predictions about climate change.

Which, again, is true, but was also true when the shape shifters were ignoring this caution.”

Don’t like the views of global warming alarmists? Wait five minutes, they’ll have new ones

By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, TORONTO SUN

Last Updated: 30th November 2008, 3:32am

What are these? It’s time to come up with a new name for the relative few still advocating for the Kyoto accord in a time of global economic meltdown.

I suggest we go with shape shifters, because they shift their shapes to suit the times.

When 2006/2007 produced a relatively mild winter in North America, Kyoto shape shifters warned us, with the gullible media in tow, that this was a dire foretaste of horrors to come under man-made global warming.

When, alas, 2007/2008 produced a relatively cold and snowy winter, Kyoto shape shifters proclaimed more snow was a sign of global warming (now renamed ”climate change,” thus ignoring the fact the climate always changes) and that in any event, no one year could be used to prove or disprove man-made global warming.

Which is true, except why didn’t they say so the year before?

When the Earth’s average annual global temperature (even though in the real world, there’s no such thing) appeared to be going up in lockstep with increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Kyoto shape shifters pronounced that even if the noted scientist Al Gore had gotten a few facts wrong in An Inconvenient Truth, this proved that on the big issue, he was right.

Alas, when it became apparent there hasn’t been any global warming since 1998 — even in the arbitrary way the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines it — Kyoto shape shifters argued one decade’s worth of data was insufficient to make predictions about climate change.

Which, again, is true, but was also true when the shape shifters were ignoring this caution.

And on and on the Kyoto shape shifters go. To wit:

– U.S. President George Bush and VP Dick Cheney were evil personified for never trying to ratify the Kyoto accord because it made no demands on the developing world, as opposed to the enlightened Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who never tried to ratify Kyoto because it made no demands on the developing world.

– U.S. president-elect Barack Obama is a visionary for, despite having attacked Kyoto when he was an Illinois state senator, now pledging to lower U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Yet re-elected Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a climate denier, for having attacked the Kyoto accord when he was opposition leader, though he’s now pledging to lower Canada’s GHG emissions to 3% below 1990 levels by 2020.

Kyoto shape shifters, whoonce railed against economic growth and now having gotten exactly what they wanted — a global recession which will lower carbon emissions — today argue non-existent ”green jobs” in non-existent ”green industries” that are in fact decades away from practicality and affordability, will save not only our economy almost overnight, but the planet.

Last week, Kyoto shape shifters made a surprise appearance in Toronto. These same folks who insist the public is way ahead of the politicians on climate change, were in fact so desperate for a ”win,” they bused in supporters to what was supposed to be a local community meeting providing information on a possible 60-turbine wind farm in Lake Ontario off the Scarborough Bluffs, in order to hijack the event for the TV cameras. Some ”win.”

The bad news for Kyoto shape shifters, and thus the good news for us, is Kyoto is now (fittingly) brain-dead, kept artificially alive mainly by high-flying UN diplomats, environmental rent-seekers, a dwindling number of European politicians and mayors like Toronto’s globe-trotting David Miller, who’s racking up the air miles between climate change conferences while arguing his resultant giant carbon footprint doesn’t count because he personally pays for — insert laughter here — ”carbon offsets,” a farce to anyone who understands the theory of man-made global warming. (Hint: If you love this planet, mayor, try video-conferencing.)

BAD NEWS FOR US

Sadly, the good news for Kyoto shape shifters, and thus the bad news for us, is that even without Kyoto, our politicians are still going to screw us, for example in Toronto, where every climate change initiative Miller has taken — be it his new garbage bins, his war on plastic bags or the TTC’s purchase of unreliable hybrid buses — ends up costing the average citizen more money, while doing nothing of note to save the planet.

Given that, it’s a good thing our economy is in such great shape, or we couldn’t afford all this crap … right?

”A bitterly cold Alaskan summer has had surprising results. For the first time in the area’s recorded history (250 years), area glaciers have begun to expand, rather than shrink. Summer temperatures, which were some 3 degrees below average, allowed record levels of winter snow to remain much longer, leading to the increase in glacial mass.”

”In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years”.

”Since 1946, the USGS has maintained a research project measuring the state of Alaskan glaciers. This year saw records broken for most snow buildup. It was also the first time since any records began being that the glaciers did not shrink during the summer months.

Those records date from the mid 1700s, when the region was first visited by Russian explorers. ”

After years of decline, glaciers in Norway are again growing, reports the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE). The actual magnitude of the growth, which appears to have begun over the last two years, has not yet been quantified, says NVE Senior Engineer Hallgeir Elvehøy.

The flow rate of many glaciers has also declined. Glacier flow ultimately acts to reduce accumulation, as the ice moves to lower, warmer elevations.

The original trend had been fairly rapid decline since the year 2000.

The developments were originally reported by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK).

DailyTech has previously reported on the growth in Alaskan glaciers, reversing a 250-year trend of loss. Some glaciers in Canada, California, and New Zealand are also growing, as the result of both colder temperatures and increased snowfall.

Ed Josberger, a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, says the growth is ”a bit of an anomaly”, but not to be unexpected.

Despite the recent growth, most glaciers in the nation are still smaller than they were in 1982. However, Elvehøy says that the glaciers were even smaller during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ of the Viking Era, prior to around the year 1350.

Not all Norwegian glaciers appear to be affected, most notably those in the Jotenheimen region of Southern Norway.

Glacier Bay National Park. Two and a half centuries ago, the entire area was covered by thick sheets of ice.High snowfall and cold weather to blame.

A bitterly cold Alaskan summer has had surprising results. For the first time in the area’s recorded history, area glaciers have begun to expand, rather than shrink. Summer temperatures, which were some 3 degrees below average, allowed record levels of winter snow to remain much longer, leading to the increase in glacial mass.

”In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound”, said glaciologist Bruce Molnia. ”In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years”.

”On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface [in] late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying [did] not become snow free until early August.”

Molnia, who works for the US Geological Survey, said it’s been a ”long time” since area glaciers have seen a positive mass balance — an increase in the total amount of ice they contain.

Since 1946, the USGS has maintained a research project measuring the state of Alaskan glaciers. This year saw records broken for most snow buildup. It was also the first time since any records began being that the glaciers did not shrink during the summer months.

Those records date from the mid 1700s, when the region was first visited by Russian explorers. Molnia estimates that Alaskan glaciers have lost about 15% of their total area since that time — an area the size of Connecticut.

One of the largest areas of shrinkage has been at the national park of Glacier Bay. When Alexei Ilich Chirikof first arrived in 1741, the bay didn’t exist at all — only a solid wall of ice. From that time until the early 1900s, the ice retreated some 50 miles, to form the bay and surrounding area.

Accordingly to Molnia, a difference of just 3 or 4 degrees is enough to shift the mass balance of glaciers from rapid shrinkage to rapid growth. From the 1600s to the 1900s, that’s just the amount of warming that was seen, as the planet exited the Little Ice Age.

Molnia says one cold summer doesn’t mean the start of a new climatic trend. At least years like this, however, might mark the beginning of another Little Ice Age.

As DailyTech reported earlier, Arctic sea ice this year has also increased substantially from its low in 2007.

Gilla

”Ski resorts across Europe will openthis weekend ahead of schedule after the biggest November snowfalls for at least a decade.”

”This is nature’s way of cocking a snook at the experts,” said Christian Rochette, the director of Ski France International, the tourist body for French resorts.The industry was expecting a good season despite gloomy forecasts from bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).”

”We’ve got excellent conditions for this time of year and very cold temperatures, which means we can use the snow cannons to make artificial snow as well,” he said.”

”It’s many, many years since we’ve had this much snow at this time of the year,” she said.”

”The mood is equally upbeat in the Swiss Alps. The Ski Club of Great Britain said that snow in parts of Switzerland was 12 times deeper than average”

”Pyrenean resorts are also enjoying snowfalls unseen for years. ”Oh, what happiness!” said Hervé Mairal, director of the Pyrenean Tourist Federation. ”We’ve got 95cm at the foot of the slopes and 1.4m at the top. We’ve not had that for a decade.

Andorra, which has had some poor conditions in recent years, is enjoying its best start to a season for four decades”

”On the Spanish side Roberto Buil, the marketing manager of the Baqueira Beret resort, said that the slopes had opened on November 22 for the first time in 44 years. ”All our 69 ski runs are open,” he said. ”We are having an amazing start.”

”The cold snap comes after an OECD report said that a two-degree rise in temperature could eliminate a third of all Europe‘s ski slopes over the next 40 years.”

”Andorra has had two metres of snow, and both of its ski areas opened last weekend, the best start to a season for more than 40 years.

More than 200 resorts will also open early this weekend in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and Switzerland. The story is repeated in Canada and New England, where a metre of snow also fell at the weekend. ”

Ski resorts across Europe will open this weekend ahead of schedule after the biggest November snowfalls for at least a decade.

The exceptional conditions, including 60cm (23in) of snow on Alpine slopes and even more in the Pyrenees, has given a much needed boost to the ski industry after claims that global warming could devastate its multibillion-pound business.

”This is nature’s way of cocking a snook at the experts,” said Christian Rochette, the director of Ski France International, the tourist body for French resorts.The industry was expecting a good season despite gloomy forecasts from bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

”We’ve got excellent conditions for this time of year and very cold temperatures, which means we can use the snow cannons to make artificial snow as well,” he said.

Reservations in France had risen by 20 per cent compared with last year, and Mr Rochette said there was no sign that Britons were being deterred by the falling pound or the economic outlook. ”They don’t seem to be prepared to sacrifice their winter holidays,” he said. ”They want to get away from all this talk of a crisis.”

French resort officials backed his optimism, although some predicted a drop in revenue from British tourists. ”Even if they still come, we expect that they’ll spend a little less,” said one.

A spokeswoman for the tourist office in Meribel, an up-market Alpine resort and a favourite of British skiers, said that, with 30cm of snow at an altitude of 1,500 metres and up to 80cm at 2,000 metres, the ski lifts would start operating today, a week earlier than planned. ”It’s many, many years since we’ve had this much snow at this time of the year,” she said.

Michael Broom Smith, of Purple Ski, said: ”On the lower pistes, the snow is thigh deep and beautifully light and fluffy and more snow is forecast this weekend.”

Val d’Isère will also open today with snow two metres deep at 3,000 metres. ”We’ve often had to put off the opening,” a tourist office spokeswoman said. ”Last year we opened a few slopes at the start of the season but this year we’re opening them all.”

The mood is equally upbeat in the Swiss Alps. The Ski Club of Great Britain said that snow in parts of Switzerland was 12 times deeper than average.

Pyrenean resorts are also enjoying snowfalls unseen for years. ”Oh, what happiness!” said Hervé Mairal, director of the Pyrenean Tourist Federation. ”We’ve got 95cm at the foot of the slopes and 1.4m at the top. We’ve not had that for a decade.”

Andorra, which has had some poor conditions in recent years, is enjoying its best start to a season for four decades and both the main areas of Grandvalira and Vallnord will be open fully from this weekend.

On the Spanish side Roberto Buil, the marketing manager of the Baqueira Beret resort, said that the slopes had opened on November 22 for the first time in 44 years. ”All our 69 ski runs are open,” he said. ”We are having an amazing start.”

The tourist office in La Molina said that it would open 18 of its 52 slopes today with ”very, very good snow for this time of the year”.

The cold snap comes after an OECD report said that a two-degree rise in temperature could eliminate a third of all Europe‘s ski slopes over the next 40 years.

”We know that global warming is happening,” Mr Rochette said. ”Perhaps there will be an unforeseen impact which means we carry on getting as much snow as we do now.”

The chalet operator Skiworld has bought extra airline seats, offering such deals as a week in the French resort of Courchevel 1850 for £269 including flights and transfers.

It’s the best start to the season in Andorra for 40 years – but prices to the resorts have fallen by a fifthSteve Keenan

Ski resorts across Europe are opening early after snowfalls of a metre and more in the past week.

Andorra has had two metres of snow, and both of its ski areas opened last weekend, the best start to a season for more than 40 years.

More than 200 resorts will also open early this weekend in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and Switzerland. The story is repeated in Canada and New England, where a metre of snow also fell at the weekend.

But the even better news for wintersports enthusiasts are falling faster than the snow. A survey from The Co-operative Travel has found prices have fallen by as much as 22 per cent for trips to Andorra.

Skiers flying into Toulouse, the gateway to Andorran resorts, are paying on average £163 less per person for a seven-night ski holiday (£568, compared to £731 in 2007). Resorts in Bulgaria are also showing a fall in prices.

While overall prices for ski holidays have risen slightly, the price of a ski package to North America has also fallen sharply – by 11 per cent to Whistler (Canada) and 7 per cent to Lake Tahoe (California).

The Co-Op studied 15,000 bookings and said the biggest success story for ski holidays is Finland, where booking numbers have grown 55 per cent over the last four years.

In addition to the main ski resorts, about half of Spain‘s 30 ski areas will also be open this weekend, reports http://www.Skiinfo.com. In the Alps, the biggest fall at the weekend was at Val Thorens, where 75cm of snow fell.

Resorts in Finland, Norway and Sweden have also done well, said skiinfo, with heavy snowfall over the weekend – 35 ski areas are now open in Norway alone.

The report also says that Eastern European ski areas have begun to open. with seven centres reported open in the SlovakRepublic and 18, including major centres like Špindleruv Mlyn, Harrachov and Pec pod Sněžkou in the CzechRepublic.

”In spite of all the campaigns against global warming, 53% of Poles said that air pollution was their biggest concern, followed by 35% who said water pollution.”

”We are 38 million people in the middle of Europe and we are behind the rest. We have to catch up with developments in your countries – and that is in everyone’s interest. And if you say to us – a country that gets 95 percent of its energy from coal – that we have to change everything, it’s just a dream. A nice dream, but a dream nonetheless,”

Poland gives the thumbs down to plans for a European climate agreement this year, as Denmark prepares for the Climate Summit in 2009.

Poland has made it clear that without extensive compromise, there will be no EU climate agreement at the December EU summit. Archive picture shows Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso – both of whom want a climate agreement as a precursor to next year’s Climate Summit in Copenhagen

The prime minister’s hopes for a global climate agreement in Copenhagen next year appear to have been dashed by Poland.

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has repeatedly said that a global agreement on CO2 reductions at next year’s Climate Summit in Copenhagen is contingent on the European Union being able to reach its own compromise at this year’s December EU summit.

But Poland has made it clear that under current circumstances it will not agree to EU targets and is close to giving up negotiations completely.

”I see no flexibility at all from the rich countries,” says Poland’s Minister for Europe and Climate Delegation leader Mikolaj Dowgielewicz in an interview with Politiken and DR.

Burden sharing

At its December summit, the 27 European Union countries are looking to agree on the practical aspects of burden-sharing in order to reach a 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020. That burden-sharing agreement is seen as vital in getting the United States, India and China, among others, to agree on a global climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009.

At the same time, it is hoped that the EU summit will confirm the Union’s ambitious target that 20 percent of Europe’s energy should come from sustainable energy sources by 2020.

But Dowgielewicz says that in reality, the goals are unattainable.

38 million

”Poland is not France which has nuclear power. Poland is not Denmark, which is almost self-sufficient in its energy requirement,” says Dowgielewicz.

”We are 38 million people in the middle of Europe and we are behind the rest. We have to catch up with developments in your countries – and that is in everyone’s interest. And if you say to us – a country that gets 95 percent of its energy from coal – that we have to change everything, it’s just a dream. A nice dream, but a dream nonetheless,” he adds.

Ultimatum

Dowgielewicz arrives in Brussels today with an ultimatum for the Commission, the French Presidency and other EU countries. His government is adamant that the current negotiations are going nowhere, and that much more consideration must be given to less wealthy EU countries.

The Polish government feels that the current status of the negotiations is impossibleand that the French Presidency is only looking out for itself, Italy and Germany – all of whom are hiding behind Poland in a wish to postpone or scrap the European climate agreement.

Movement

Dowgielewicz says he finds it difficult to see a compromise.

”There are no good signs for the negotiations of the coming weeks. And quite honestly I am sorry about that. But everyone is going to have to compromise if we are to reach agreement in December. At the moment, I cannot imagine how that is going to be possible,” he concludes.

Before next week’s giant international climate conference to be held in Poznań, the daily RZECZPOSPOLITA has published results of a probe on climate change, showing that Poles are more worried about other threats than global warming.

In spite of all the campaigns against global warming, 53% of Poles said that air pollution was their biggest concern, followed by 35% who said water pollution.

Global warming came third at 34%, followed by 26% respondents worried over contaminated food, 17% over forests and 9% over arable land.

Gilla

The nine-day People’s Power for the Climate protest vigil at Newcastle (Australia) has been cancelled after just one day due to rain and cold. Organisers had previously advised participants to bring sun-cream and hats.

The single most reliable meteorological phenomenon known to humankind is that which delivers hilariously cold weather whenever global warming alarmists gather. And it’s due to strike again at a Climate Action Now! rally held to mark Obama’s new planet-saving policies.

”A former chief scientific advisor to the government has said that EU renewable-energy quotas will cause widespread fuel poverty. Sir David King believes that European heads of state, in agreeing the targets, may have mistaken electricity usage for total energy consumption – leading to overly ambitious and expensive goals being set.

”If we overdo wind we are going to put up the price of electricity and that means more people will fall into the fuel poverty trap,” said Sir David, speaking to the BBC.

”Numbers around half a million [in the UK] are not at all unrealistic.”

King believes that the EU heads of state may only have meant to sign up to 20 per cent of electricity being renewable, not 20 per cent of all energy used.

”I think there was some degree of confusion at the heads of states meeting dealing with this,” he told the Beeb.

”If they had said 20 per cent renewables on the electricity grids across the European Union by 2020, we would have had a realistic target… saying 20 per cent of all energy, I actually wonder whether that wasn’t a mistake. I was rather surprised when I heard what the decision was.”

The prof believes that the EU should change its mind, as it is doing on biofuels.

”This is an issue which needs to be revisited and I say this as somebody who feels that we really have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions very substantially… it is an expensive, and not a very clever route to go for 35 to 40 per cent on wind turbines.”

This is not what President-elect Barack Obama’s energy and climate strategists would want to hear. It would be anathema to Al Gore and other assorted luminaries touting renewable energy sources which in one giant swoop will save the world from the ”tyranny” of fossil fuels and mitigate global warming. And as if these were not big enough issues, oilman T. Boone Pickens’ grandiose plan for wind farms from Texas to Canada is supposed to bring about a replacement for the natural gas now used for power generation. That move will then lead to energy independence from foreign oil.

Too good to be true? Yes, and in fact it is a lot worse.

Wind has been the cornerstone of almost all environmentalist and social engineering proclamations for more than three decades and has accelerated to a crescendo the last few years in both the United States and the European Union.

But Europe, getting a head start, has had to cope with the reality borne by experience and it is a pretty ugly picture.

Independent reports have consistently revealed an industry plagued by high construction and maintenance costs, highly volatile reliability and a voracious appetite for taxpayer subsidies. Such is the economic strain on taxpayer funds being poured into wind power by Europe‘s early pioneers — Denmark, Germany and Spain – that all have recently been forced to scale back their investments.

As a result this summer, the U.K., under pressure to meet an ambitious E.U. climate target of 20 percent carbon dioxide cuts by 2020, assumed the mantle of world leader in wind power production. It did so as a direct consequence of the U.K. Government’s Renewables Obligations Certificate, a financial incentive scheme for power companies to build wind farms. Thus the U.K.’s wind operation provides the ideal case study — and one that provides the most complete conclusions.

The U.K. has all the natural advantages. It is the windiest country in Europe. It has one of the continent’s longest coastlines for the more productive (and less obtrusive) offshore farms. It has a long-established national power grid. In short, if wind power is less than successful in the U.K., its success is not guaranteed anywhere.

But wind infrastructure has come at a steep price. In fiscal year 2007-08 U.K. electricity customers were forced to pay a total of over $1 billion to the owners of wind turbines. That figure is due to rise to over $6 billion a year by 2020 given the government’s unprecedented plan to build a nationwide infrastructure with some 25 gigawatts of wind capacity, in a bid to shift away from fossil fuel use.

Ofgem, which regulates the U.K.’s electricity and gas markets, has already expressed its concern at the burgeoning tab being picked up by the British taxpayer which, they claim, is ”grossly distorting the market” while hiding the real cost of wind power. In the past year alone, prices for electricity and natural gas in the U.K. have risen twice as fast as the European Union average according to figures released in November by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. While 15 percent energy price rises were experienced across the E.U., in the U.K. gas and electricity prices rose by a staggering 29.7 percent. Ofgem believes wind subsidy has been a prime factor and questions the logic when, for all the public investment, wind produces a mere 1.3 percent of the U.K.‘s energy needs.

In May 2008, a report from Cambridge Energy Research Associates warned that an over-reliance on offshore wind farms to meet European renewable energy targets would further create supply problems and drive up investor costs. No taxpayer respite there. But worse news was to come.

In June, the most in-depth independent assessment yet of Britain’s expanding wind turbine industry was published. In the journal Energy Policy gas turbine expert Jim Oswald and his co-authors, came up with a series of damning conclusions: not only is wind power far more expensive and unreliable than previously thought, it cannot avoid using high levels of natural gas, which not only it will increase costs but in turn will mean far less of a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions than has been claimed.

Oswald’s report highlights the key issue of load factor, the actual power generated compared to the theoretical maximum, and how critical it is to the viability of the wind power industry. In 2006, according to U.K. government statistics, the average load factor for wind turbines across the U.K. was 27.4 percent. Thus a typical 2 megawatt turbine actually produced only 0.54 MW of power on an average day. The worst performing U.K. turbine had a load factor of just 7 percent. These figures reflect a poor return on investment. But this poor return is often obscured by the subsidy system that allows turbine operators and supporters to claim they can make a profit even when turbines operate at a very low load factors. So what’s the bottom line? British consumers are paying twice over for their electricity, funding its means of production and paying for its use as end users.

Variability is one of the chief criticisms levelled at wind power. When the wind drops or blows too hard, turbines stop spinning and you get no power. Wind turbine advocates have claimed that this can be avoided by the geographical spread of wind farms, perhaps by creating an international ”supergrid.” But, as Oswald’s report makes clear, calm conditions not only prevail on a fairly regular basis, they often extend across the country with the same conditions being experienced as far away as France and Germany. Worse still, says Oswald, long periods of calm over recent decades occurred in the dead of winter when electricity demand is highest.

Periods of low wind means a need for pumped storage and essential back-up facilities. Oswald told The Register online news service that a realistically feasible U.K. pumped-storage base would only cope with one or two days of low winds at best. As regards back-up facilities, Oswald states the only feasible systems for the planned 25 gigawatt wind system would be one that relied equally on old-style natural gas turbines. As Oswald says however, the expense of a threefold wind, pump storage and gas turbine back-up solution ”would be ridiculous.”

The problems don’t end there. The British report highlights what more and more wind farms would mean when it came to installing gas turbine back-ups. ”Electricity operators will respond by installing lower-cost plant ($/kW) as high capital plant is not justified under low utilisation regimes.”

But cheap gas turbines are far less efficient than big, properly sized base-load turbines and will not be as resilient in coping with the heavy load cycling they would experience. Cheaper, less resilient plants will mean high maintenance costs and spare back-up gas turbines to replace broken ones that would suffer regular thermal stress cracking. And of course, the increasing use of gas for the turbines would have a detrimental effect on reducing carbon dioxide emission – always one of the chief factors behind the wind revolution.

Oswald’s report concludes also that the all this wear and tear will further stress the gas pipeline network and gas storage system. ”High-efficiency base load plant is not designed or developed for load cycling,” says Oswald. Critically, most of the issues raised in the independent report have not been factored into the cost of wind calculations. With typical British understatement, Oswald concludes that claims for wind power are ”unduly optimistic.”

Gilla

As a fellow Swede I am DEEPLY ashamed of Hans Blix, former foreign minister, former director IAEA, former director UNMOVIC etc.

Furthermore, to top it off, he is: ”Chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission”. Funded by the Swedish government and based in Stockholm.

Yeah, it feels safe with that kind of a chairman doesn’t it.

From today’s The National (Abu Dhabi):

”Hans Blix, the chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, embraced the ambitions of the UAE and other Middle-Eastern oil producers to build nuclear reactors to supply their growing power needs.

”I am fully in favour of oil-rich countries having nuclear reactors,” Dr Blix said. ”Long-term, I am more scared about global warming than I am about weapons of mass destruction.”

Hans Blix, the chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, favours oil-rich countries building nuclear reactors. Amy Leang / The National

The UAE has won plaudits for its civilian nuclear-energy programme from international nuclear experts and politicians gathered in the capital yesterday.

”We insist on safety and security first, because, after all, we drink from this Gulf,” said Anwar Gargash, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, addressing a conference hosted by the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research. ”The programme is designed as a template and standard for our area, which is in danger of seeing proliferation without the necessary safeguards.”

The Government is in the final stages of evaluating a proposal to build a fleet of nuclear reactors to provide up to 15,000 megawatts of power by 2020, he said.

International speakers at the conference unanimously agreed that nuclear power development brings a risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. But they said the UAE’s programme was setting an example for the rest of the Middle East and could provide a foundation for regional co-operation in areas ranging from nuclear regulation and inspection to electricity sharing and the training of staff.

”We face a growing risk of nuclear weapons proliferation as nuclear reactors become a growing source of power. That is why the UAE programme is so important. A Middle East free of nuclear weapons is critical,” said David Miliband, the British foreign secretary.

”Not only has Al decided that Mayan civilization ended because of global warming, he also accuses them of not taking the environmental concerns seriously.

Here’s the question that will make any self-respecting lefty head explode… what caused global warming in 800-900AD, the Mayan era? It wasn’t factories, SUV’s or Al Gore’s private jet, so could it have been… natural?!”

A new study suggests the Mayan civilization might have collapsed due to environmental disasters:

”‘These models suggest that as ecosystems were destroyed by mismanagement or were transformed by global climatic shifts, the depletion of agricultural and wild foods eventually contributed to the failure of the Maya sociopolitical system,’ writes environmental archaeologist Kitty Emery of the Florida Museum of Natural History in the current Human Ecology journal.”

As we move towards solving the climate crisis, we need to remember the consequences to civilizations that refused to take environmental concerns seriously.”

Are you like me and a little puzzled as to exactly how the GHCN-GISS problem happened? GISS blamed their supplier (NOAA GHCN). Unfortunately NOAA’s been stone silent on the matter. I checked the Russian data at meteo.ru and there was nothing wrong with it. Nor is there anything wrong at GHCN-Daily for stations reporting there. So it’s something at GHCN-Monthly, a data set that I’ve been severely critical of in the past, primarily for the indolence of its updating, an indolence that has really reached a level of negligence.

In passing, while I was looking at Resolute data in connection with a question about a mis-step in temporarily losing some northern Canadian data while the Russian patch was being applied, I also noticed what appears to be a prior incident like the one that we just saw – only in reverse (and not a small error either, it was about 14 deg C). I’d also like to remind people that an identical incident with Finnish stations was reported here on Sep 23.

GHCN Non-Upating

Some of critics have asserted that I’ve been unfair in criticizing GISS, rather than GHCN. I submit that I’ve been drawing attention to problems at GHCN for a long time now. And last year, we actually had an incident when NASA GISS apologists made exactly the same fingerpointing excuses that they are now – that problems were GHCN’s fault and NASA GISS was blameless. Here are some prior posts on the matter.

In May 2007, I invited readers to help the climate community locate certain cities that the climate science community seemed unable to locate. The data set to which we had been directed by the CRU FOI officer as CRU’s course referred remarkably to ”stations with no location”. I thought that CA readers would be intrigued by the idea of ”stations with no location” and asked:

Were these pirate weather stations that changed locations to avoid detection by NASA? Were they voices from beyond – perhaps evidence of unknown civilizations? And there were over 420 such stations out of just over 5000 in total. So there were not just a few strangers among us. A number of the mystery stations came from the mysterious civilization known as ”Chile”, whose existence has long been suspected.

A few months later, I invited readers to help NASA find the lost city of Wellington NZ, where NASA and GHCN had been unable to obtain records since 1988. I wondered whether the city had been destroyed by Scythians or perhaps Assyrians. Fortunately, one of the survivors made contact with us – indeed, the survivor was employed by a national meteorological service and assured us that records had in fact been kept since contact had been lost.

On another occasion, we pondered why GHCN had been unable to locate Canadian data (for Dawson and many other stations) since 1989 – and why NASA GISS had stood idly by, while nothing was done for 20 years. I asked:

How hard can it be to locate Canadian data? Maybe it’s time to ask the people who do the Consumer Price Index to compile temperature statistics. It’s all just data – maybe professional data people would do a better job than the present people who seem to have trouble getting off their La-Z-Boys.

We visited the same problem in connection with GHCN’s failure to update results from Peru and Bolivia since 1989, while NASA GISS merrily went about adjusting the data trends without bothering to collect up-to-date information readily available on the internet (and even at GHCN- Daily data). In this case, there was a small existing controversy as NASA GISS apologist (and Hansen’s other pit bull, Tamino) asserted stridently (see comments passim) that two sites, Cobija and Rurrenabaque, did not have post-1988 data and then, amusingly continued to assert this, in the face of simple proof that data almost up to the minute could be located on the internet.

Tamino:

There’s no post-1988 data for Cobija or Rurrenabaque

After I showed the existence of post-1988 data, a poster at Tamino’s site asked:

OK now i’m confused. Is there or is there not temp data for Cobija and Rurrenabaque after 1988? (as posted over at CA) Not trying to take any side here just losing faith on what to believe.

Even after I’d produced post-1988 data (and given active links to modern data), Tamino persisted:

[Response: I downloaded both the raw and adjusted datasets from GISS, and there’s no data beyond April 1989. ]

One of his posters persisted:

Dear Tamino,

I know you insist that ”[t]here’s no data from Cobija or Rurrenabaque”, But McIntyre has posted the post 1988 temperature data for Cobija and Rurrenabaque at Climate Audit today.

Why the discrepancy?

To which Tamino answered:

[Response: He didn’t get it from GHCN or from NASA. Does it include adjustments for station moves, time-of-observation, instrument changes? Does Anthony Watts have photographs?]

Actually this wasn’t even true. I’d been able to get data from GHCN-Daily. Another reader persisted, asking the quesitons already raised here, as to why NASA GISS:

1) stopp[ed] using data series in 1988 when a full series exists till today (documented on CA for Cobija, Rurrenabaque).

2) Classiff[ied] stations as rural that are in fact urban (documented on CA for Yurimaguas, Moyobamba, Chachapoyas, Lambayeque, Tarapoto, Cajamarca, Tingo Maria) and adjusting them accordingly…

To which Tamino responded with the same fingerpointing argument recently used by Hansen’s other bulldog (Gavin):

[Response: … I asked you ”in what way did GISS violate legitimate scientific method?” It appears that it’s not GISS but GHCN which left the post-1989 data out of the combined data supplied to GISS. Maybe there’s even a good reason. Clearly it was not GISS but GHCN which classified urban stations as rural. GISS was sufficiently dissatisfied with the classifications provided by GHCN to devise a whole new method and apply it to the U.S. Adjusting stations by comparing to other stations which have faulty population metadata is most certainly NOT a violation of legitimate scientific METHOD — it’s faulty metadata.

People who are not climate scientists typically have to scratch their heads a little when they see this sort of reasoning, which, as I just noted, is pretty much NASA’s present defence. The Other Dude Did It.

BTW NASA’s use of absurdly faulty population data from GHCN is an important issue in itself that we’ve discussed in the past. Because many of their ”rural” locations outside the US are not ”rural”, but medium-sized and rapidly-growing towns and even cities, their ”adjustment” for UHI outside the U.S. is feckless and, in many cases, leads them to opposite adjustments in cities. This is a large topic in itself.

At their webpage, NOAA GHCN assures us that their quality control is ”rigorous”.

The GHCN data have undergone extensive quality control, as described by Peterson et al. [1998c].

I guess if you don’t actually update the majority of your data, it reduces the work involved in quality control.

I refer to these past posts as evidence that problems at GHCN have been on our radar screen long before the present incident. Indeed, I hope that access to GHCN procedures will be a positive outcome of the present contretemps.

Finland

CA reader, Andy, commented here on Sept 23, 2008:

BTW, GISS temperature data for the finnish towns like Oulu, Kajaani, Kuusamo etc shows exactly the same temperatures for July and August 2008. First time ever seen!

which was confirmed by Jean S here.

Resolute NWT

Now as promised above, here’s evidence of a prior incident. Because there’s been an amusing mishap with northern Canadian values being absent from the NASA map on Monday, present on Wednesday and absent again on Friday, I took a look at the Canadian source data for Resolute NWT, averaging the monthly values of -32.2 in March 2008 and -18.5 deg C in April.

The April 2008 value is invalid, being nearly 14 deg C colder than the actual value. I guess an error of 14 deg C is insufficient to engage their ”rigorous” quality control.

Also, Jean S had already mentioned an identical incident with Finnish stations about a month before the most recent Hansen incident.

I don’t plan to spend time doing an inventory of incidents – surely NASA and NOAA have sufficient resources to do that. However, this one incident is sufficient to prove that the present incident is not isolated and that the same problem exists elsewhere in the system. I’m perplexed as to how the problem occurs in the first place, given that the error doesn’t occur in original data. I’m sure that we’ll find out in due course.

The bigger issue is, of course, why NOAA and NASA have been unable to update the majority of their network for 20 years.

(Schmitt has served as Chairman of the NASA Advisory Council from November 2005 to October 2008 )

”—As a geologist, I love Earth observations. But, it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a ”consensus” that humans are causing global warming in when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. ”Consensus”, as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science.You know as well as I, the ”global warming scare” is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society’s activities. ”

”A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen’s institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.”

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China‘s official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its ”worst snowstorm ever”. In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs – run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious ”hockey stick” graph – GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new ”hotspot” in the Arctic – in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen’s institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week’s latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen’s methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising ”very much faster” than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world’s governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

Dr. Madhav Khandekar specializes in understanding extreme weather events in Canada and in other parts of the world. He holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics, a M.Sc. in Statistics from India (Pune University) as well as both M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Meteorology from Florida State University. As one of the world leaders in meteorology, Dr. Khandekar has worked in the fields of climatology, meteorology and oceanography for over 45 years and has published nearly 100 papers, reports, book reviews and scientific commentaries as well as a book on Ocean Wave Analysis and Modeling, published by Springer-Verlag (1989).

Madhav Khandekar is a retired Meteorologist, formerly with Environment Canada

De har studerat ” changes in the North Atlantic deep-water formation during the last four glacial cycles” och vad som har påverkat dessa förändringar.

Slutsats (Surprise! Surprise!):

”She explained that the new data changes our understanding about how the different parts of the climate system are interacting with one another and in particular the influence of the ice sheets on climate.

”Because the ice sheets are so large, it was a nice simple story to say that they were having the predominant influence on all the parts of the climate system,” said Lisiecki. ”But our study showed that this wasn’t the only important part of the changes in climate. The distribution of sunlight is the controlling factor for North Atlantic deep water formation”.

Top of pageAbstractThe factors driving glacial changes in ocean overturning circulation are not well understood. On the basis of a comparison of 20 climate variables over the past four glacial cycles, the SPECMAP project1 proposed that summer insolation at high northern latitudes (that is, Milankovitch forcing) drives the same sequence of ocean circulation and other climate responses over 100-kyr eccentricity cycles, 41-kyr obliquity cycles and 23-kyr precession cycles. SPECMAP analysed the circulation response at only a few sites in the Atlantic Ocean, however, and the phase of circulation response has been shown to vary by site and orbital band2. Here we test the SPECMAP hypothesis by measuring the phase of orbital responses in benthic 13C (a proxy indicator of ocean nutrient content) at 24 sites throughout the Atlantic over the past 425 kyr. On the basis of 13C responses at 3,000-4,010 m water depth, we find that maxima in Milankovitch forcing are associated with greater mid-depth overturning in the obliquity band but less overturning in the precession band. This suggests that Atlantic overturning is strongly sensitive to factors beyond ice volume and summer insolation at high northern latitudes. A better understanding of these processes could lead to improvements in model estimates of overturning rates, which range from a 40 per cent increase to a 40 per cent decrease at the Last Glacial Maximum3 and a 10-50 per cent decrease over the next 140 yr in response to projected increases in atmospheric CO2 (ref. 4).

Sunlight has more powerful influence on ocean circulation and climate than North American ice sheets

A study reported in today’s issue of Nature disputes a longstanding picture of how ice sheets influence ocean circulation during glacial periods.

The distribution of sunlight, rather than the size of North American ice sheets, is the key variable in changes in the North Atlantic deep-water formation during the last four glacial cycles, according to the article. The new study goes back 425,000 years, according to Lorraine Lisiecki, first author and assistant professor in the Department of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Lisiecki and her co-authors studied 24 separate locations in the Atlantic by analyzing information from ocean sediment cores. By observing the properties of the shells of tiny marine organisms, called foraminifera, found in these cores, they were able to deduce information about the North Atlantic deep water formation. Scientists can discern historical ocean temperature and circulation patterns through the analysis of the chemical composition of these marine animals.

Previously, scientists relied on a study called ”Specmap,” performed in 1992, to find out how different parts of the climate system interacted with one another during glacial cycles. Specmap analyzed ocean circulation at only one place in the Atlantic.

”What I found was that the one site that the Specmap study used actually didn’t match most of the other sites in the Atlantic,” said Lisiecki. ”They just happened to have a strange site that didn’t behave like most of the other sites. The other sites show that the circulation is not responding to the ice volume, but that it is responding to changes in the distribution of sunlight.”

Previously, scientists believed that deep ocean circulation — the amount of water formed in the North Atlantic that goes into the deep ocean — varied or responded according to the amount of ice volume in the Northern Hemisphere. The prevailing idea was that when ice ages occur, with large sheets of ice over North America, the amount of North Atlantic deep water is reduced.

”That’s an important part of circulation,” said Lisiecki. ”The Gulf Stream brings up warm water from the tropics and that water is turned into this North Atlantic deep water that then sinks and moves southward at depth so you have a cycle. Warm water moves northward and then cools and sinks. That’s the North Atlantic deep water formation process.”

When warm water in the Gulf Stream comes north, it brings heat to the North Atlantic and Europe and then sinks in the North Atlantic and flows back southward at a depth of 3,000 meters.

”This is fairly important for the climate because it brings this heat northward,” said Lisiecki. ”The Specmap study in 1992 found that circulation is reduced when you have large ice sheets — presumably because you have less of this North Atlantic deep water forming. Our results show that this is not always true.”

She explained that the new data changes our understanding about how the different parts of the climate system are interacting with one another and in particular the influence of the ice sheets on climate.

”Because the ice sheets are so large, it was a nice simple story to say that they were having the predominant influence on all the parts of the climate system,” said Lisiecki. ”But our study showed that this wasn’t the only important part of the changes in climate. The distribution of sunlight is the controlling factor for North Atlantic deep water formation.

”Our study tells us a lot about how the ocean circulation is affected by changes in climate,” she adds. ”The ocean does not always follow the climate; it exerts its own impact on climate processes. In other words, the ocean circulation doesn’t just follow along with the rest of the climate, it actually changes in different ways than the ice sheets during glacial cycles.”

Gilla

This is a perfect, real life example of Global Warming Hysteria and the Carbon Tax mania. As I have said so many times before: This is a politicians and bureaucrats heaven since they can TAX ANYTHING in the name of ”offsetting carbon emissions”.

Achieving nothing but economic gloom and doom for the local communities and the common man who have to pay for it. In addition, as a thank you from the politicians for the lower economic standard they give YOU, and which YOU PAY FOR, they give you the Blame and Gilt for things that you cannot control.

Yes, there you have the Global Warming Hysteria in a nutshell!

And I cannot resist giving you one comment to the article:

”The inmates are truly running the asylumn…there is a reason we don’t let bureaucrats or academia types in charge of anything important…they lack basic vision and are beholden to their pet projects that get them grant $$$….

About two years ago I was asked by my local city councilman Larry Wahl to serve on the city of Chico ”sustainability task force”. I was initially enthusiastic, but the talk soon turned away from alternative energy solutions that I embrace, to getting a city wide inventory of carbon emissions. The task force, chaired by Vice Mayor Ann Schwab didn’t seem the least bit interested in solutions, but focused on tallying carbon emissions in town. That effort didn’t make a lot of sense to me then, since it gained the city nothing.

Now I know why, it was a prelude to taxation followed by wanton spending. They had to inventory to know how to tax. The ”greenhouse gas” report they issued on September 2nd of this year had a number of oddball fees, taxes, giveaways, and edicts, such as a city wide gasoline tax, and even free electricity handouts to city employees for sustainable commuting. All of this while we are in an economic downturn and city financial crisis. This is why I can no longer support Ann Schwab, even though I worked with her.

There is a backstory to my involvement with this, but first things first, here is a copy of the sustainability task force ”work plan” from September 2nd.

The local newspaper also did a story on the preliminary report, but not on the work plan from the link above.

Most important to note is that while my name is on this report, I had no hand in it whatsoever, as I was unceremoniously booted off the task force on December 20th, 2007 by vice mayor Schwab who sent me a letter advising of my termination. The reason? Attendance. But this goes to show how messed up things are with this task force, as they could not even get my termination straight and had me listed as a member 9 months afterwards.

For the record, there is little in this report I agree with and my name should not be on it. Two weeks ago I sent an email to Vice Mayor Schwab and the City Clerk Debbie Presson asking that my name be removed. No response.

When I was on the task force I had the distinction of being one of the few people that actually walked the talk, as I had put solar on my home and a local school, plus I drive an electric car (though I’ve since upgraded to a newer model electric).

No matter, I wasn’t well liked because I really didn’t want to play the carbon emissions tally game, preferring solutions instead. So I’m not surprised that Schwab booted me off when she had the chance.

The task force was made up of a few people like myself, that ran businesses in town, but the vast majority were city employees, university employees, and other publicly paid people. The meetings were on Mondays in the middle of the afternoon. People like me that run businesses found it hard to attend, because with us lost time at work means lost revenue, City and university employees don’t have those problems. Prior to my dismissal, another local businessman, Lon Glazner, voluntarily left because he had the same issues.

OK, enough about why my name is on the report, and why it tends to be public employee centric rather than more representative of our community makeup.

First there is the cost: $30,000 which went to a university employee (already on the public payroll) to produce this report. Another consultant fee in the same cozy city-university sustainability circle of friends. They did no outside bid advertisements that I’m aware of, they just picked the university ”sustainability guru” to do the job.

Let’s look at some of the suggested ”community reduction” actions in this report presented by Schwab and her task force:

A suggestion to pay city employees to give up their parking spot.

Require energy audits on residential units at the time of sale.

Increased fees on waste disposal.

A local gasoline tax to generate local revenue.

Forcing a lights out policy on local businesses after hours

Free electricity and free parking for city employees that drive electric vehicles

Free or reduced cost electricity and parking for citizens that drive electric vehicles

You can find these items in Appendix C of the report, near the end under ”Community Reduction Measures” which are designed to meet a carbon emissions target.

Here’s an interesting graph from the consultant’s report:

I don’t know about you, but spending 30 grand for information telling us that cars are the biggest source of CO2 in or city of Chico?. Shocker. No worries, we’ll attack that problem. On page 39 of the September 2 Greenhouse Gas Report there is this gem: ”By implementing a local gas tax, the City could generate revenue to put toward sustainability projects”.

The task force also favors doling out taxpayer money for ”sustainability”, page 42: ”For employees who own electric vehicles, the City could provide prime parking locations that offer free electric filling stations.” and for the public, page 39: ”Electric fueling station-provide free or low-cost electric fueling stations for EVs.”

I drive an electric car. I’d gladly pay $1-3 per hour for park n’ charge. Vice mayor Schwab not only misses this dirt simple revenue opportunity, she wants to give away free electricity during a city budget crisis.

Just yesterday the state of California announced it was already 10 billion in the hole this year, and our county government announced it was 10 million in the red. Chico‘s own sales tax revenue has been falling, and the city budget has been in the red for at least two years now, and there has been little substantial movement by city leaders to really solve the problem.

From my friend Lon Glazner’s Commission Impossible blog Commission Impossible Blog, here is a recent memo to all city councilors about the current tax revenue situation:

This isn’t news, as city sales tax revenue has been sliding for quite awhile now and the City of Chico’s budget has been in the hole and will likely continue to be:

Image: The city General Fund and Parks deficit in red without transfers away from road and transportation improvements. Money from a gas tax we all pay has been transferred away from roads to cover the costs of other spending. If you wonder why bike routes are planned but not built, or why roads and traffic issues take so long to address, here is the culprit.

For those reading that don’t live here, the business climate of our town is getting grim. Departments stores, restaurants, and other local businesses are closing almost daily due to the economic climate. The trickle down effect from state budget cuts will also affect the city’s largest state funded employers soon, such as ChicoStateUniversity, and the ChicoUnifiedSchool District.

So with the city budget headed for a certain train wreck, and the state economy in a shambles, I am absolutely gobsmacked that Schwab and her sustainability task force are suggesting gasoline taxes and free electricity giveaways at the same time. Then there’s the idea that businesses should be forced to turn out their lights at night. Saving energy is a fine idea, but at the expense of inviting crime into an unlit business?

This shows a level of disconnect that only a bureaucrat could muster. And, it’s why I strongly recommend that people reading this don’t vote for Schwab, but choose a city council candidate that has some business sense.

I’m all for efficiency and alternate energy ideas that are cost neutral or revenue generators, but the reality is those things aren’t being considered.

Public giveaways, new taxes, and visions of a sustainable future won’t solve the budget problems, sensible management combined with spending cuts and plans that will enhance the local business environment will.